No Other Way
by PandaFire McMango
Summary: A sister piece to The Journey. From Angel's POV, only earlier in time. Starts as she begins to get sick, ends before the hospital. Very angsty. I have no spell check on this stupid computer so as a rule of science, there will be typos. Many of them. Sorry


You want to tell him about that first feeling of nausea, that first spike of fever...

But you don't.

You want to tell him about those strange pains in your stomach and your chest...

But you don't.

You want to tell him about when you were putting on a shirt one day and you glimpsed the first lesion, down by your hip; small, dark, and threatening...

But you don't.

You don't tell him anything until you have to.

Why?

Because you love him too much to scare him with the first signs of your death. These things have come and gone before...but there's a finality to them now. _Sorry, that's it, you've filled your quota and now time's going against you, time is trickling through your fingers and there's not a thing you can do about it._

Not a thing.

You can fake it at first. You, who's always acknowledged that the worst was coming, coming, coming, you who always preached about acceptance, about giving into love...you now deny that this headache is anything more than a result of the New York City fumes; that this dizziness is only caused by not getting enough to drink; that this cough means you swallowed your drink wrong and now it's irritating your throat. But denial shouldn't be everything. That's not its way. Denial is a temporary creature; sooner or later, it scurries away and you're faced with whatever you tucked behind the curtain.

Your curtain is thin; you don't really believe in your denial. You wouldn't be denying anything if it wasn't for him. But now it's all for him. Every symptom that you force out of sight or make excuses for is concealed so that he won't see you beginning to die from the inside out. You know him too well to think that he wouldn't care, or that he would run away from you. You know, like you know the sun will rise each morning, that he wouldn't abandon you; he would stay with you, care for you, let his life fall away as he tended to you...You don't want that. He loves you; you love him too, and that's why you won't allow him to waste his time with a hopeless cause. Your time has run out. His has the same ending yours does. You tried not to waste your time; why should you let him waste his?

And then one night, he sees it. One night, you let your guard down and he sees your weakness bared open like a fresh cut...

_"Angel? Angel, oh my god..." You hear his voice and his footsteps as he moves into the bathroom. Then you feel his warm, strong hands on your back, rubbing your shoulder blades and the sore place at the nape of your neck. You want to acknowledge him, let him know that you feel him and his gentleness, but just then another sour wave of bile rushes up your throat and you lean over the tiolet again, hands nearly breaking themselves as you grip the porcelain toilet edge with all your strength. It forces its way out of you, twanging your stomach muscles sickeningly. His hands are steadying you and his voice is low and deep as it whispers comforts. You cling to that voice as you start to gag again and more vomit, laced with brownish blood, scrapes out of you._

_Finally it's over. You lean back, breathing hard and, though you don't realize it, swaying with dizziness. Toilet paper, dry and clean, wipes the traces of bile off your face. Then those hands and arms wrap you in, pull you against a solid chest and seal out the pain and disgust. You press your face against that chest and breathe slowly, inhaling that wonderfully familiar scent of brown skin and muscles and love in a beating heart. Slowly, gradually, you are lulled into a sort of trance by his gentle voice and the warmth of his skin. In this trance, you vaguely feel someone rinsing your mouth out with water; then scooping you up and carrying you like a baby into the cool, dark bedroom, where the soft sheets and the cushy mattress send you deeper and deeper into your state of peace. Sleep, sleep, sleep away the pain and the sickness..._

_But you don't let yourself actually drop off until he comes back from the bathroom and lies down beside you, wrapping his arms around your chest and pressing you firmly against his body._

_In the morning, there isn't much to say. Eventually, you start to answer his questions. Yes, this has been going on for a while now. No, I haven't taken any medication. Yes, I have enough AZT. Stop acting like this, I'm not four years old. I can handle whatever's coming. I know you're trying to help, but just remember that this is my fight at the core. I'll do my best to...No, I don't want you to bury yourself whenever you're tempted to prevent me from lifting a finger. Now you're just acting silly._

_And I love you for it._

He keeps to his word as well as he can. Only when YOU decide that your legs aren't stable does he wrap an arm around your waist and support you upright. YOU make the desicion about how much pain medication you take for those sore throats. YOU have to give him the cue to massage your ankles when they started to swell and bruise.

Ok. So you're a little trigger-happy on the whole ankle massage thing. But really, who wouldn't be?

All in all, days turns into weeks as you slip further down the hill and further into the sickness. Eventually, everyone sees what's happening to you, and it gnaws at your heart to see what pain it causes them. Mimi can hardly look at you sometimes, while Maureen laughs little too loud and a little too fast when she's around you. Mark acts as though he's unsure whether you can handle his presence, deathly weak as you are (sarcasm only slightly laced with fright). You want to slap him upside his little blond head and yell, "Stop walking on eggshells aound me! Just because I have AIDS and it's finally staring to kill me doesn't mean that I'm not still Angel!"

Roger is strange about it. Some days he acts more normal than the others and you feel eternally grateful to him. Other days he can't even bring himself to tolerate your voice, and you want to both hug him and kill him. You know that you're reminding him of April; of what she would have endured had she lived. You're reminding him that she wouldn't have lived forever anyway, and that she might have had a good reason for wanting to die. But it's not your fault. You didn't ask for this. You would never ask for this.

Joanne is as cautious as the rest of them, treating you as though you were going to give up the ghost at the slightest disturbance. It makes you want to scream, makes you want to hit walls and beat your fists against the ground. Ever since birth, you've been a tolerant person, easygoing and peaceful about personal problems. As long as AIDS stayed at bay, you went to Life Support and took the AZT and felt a sort of inner calm about it all. Now that it's showing, it's apparent, you feel this horrible anger and frustration biting through you, scouring your insides with a burning unhappiness. You snap at people when you're strong enough, and the kindest actions make you furious. You try not to let it show, try to find that inner peace, but it's so hard to let all this emotion go. You don't feel like you anymore. That's what's scariest. You're losing everything--your health, your strength, your life--but dear God, please don't let you lose yourself.

And then finally a dam breaks inside of you, and this smaller, erratic flow of of symptoms rushes you so hard that it knocks you sideways. Permanently. Every day is a fever; every day is a sore throat; every day is a little less strength in your joints. There is one terrifying morning where you wake up and, your mind blurred by sleep and a blossoming fever, you cannot recognize him. You cannot find the familiarity in his features. For that single moment of confusion, you lose the last thing you have left. Then it comes flooding back and you bite your lip so hard that beads of blood trickle down your chin. He worriedly sits beside you and runs a hand over your forehead, as though he's pushing back invisible hair. You hug him with all your minimal strength and pray to whatver God there is that you won't ever lose him again.

You've never liked being sick. Even as a child, you would run around the house with fevers and colds, whooping and hollering and trying to throw off the illness. Whenever your mother or the doctor declared you healthy, it was always a relief, a cause for celebration. One time, when you had chicken pox for a week and a half, you almost overdosed on aspirin in your haste to get well. That week and a half was torture. Eleven days was eternity to you.

Now you really do have to contend with eternity, and the notion makes you dizzy and nauseous.

There is no end in sight. Even if there was, it wouldn't be a real ending, only temporary respite. You feel as though the walls of your world as closing in faster and faster, squeezing you into a small square of Angel, like those compressed cars in the junk yard. No more Angel. Angel concentrate. Angel diluted.

Angel gone.


End file.
